The systematic racism, forced assimilation and apartheid of Indigenous Peoples in the United States has been documented in the “Consolidated Indigenous Shadow Report,” to be presented by the International Indian Treaty Council to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Dedicated to Floyd Red Crow Westerman, who passed to the Spirit World on December 13, 2007, the report is compiled from the testimony of individuals and groups of Indigenous Peoples and includes data from a wide range of sources.

The data reveals “a system of Apartheid and forced assimilation,” where Indigenous Peoples are “warehoused in poverty and neglect” in the United States. The racism permeates Indian life, including life at its foundation, at American Indian sacred places.

Indian treaty rights, the abrogation of treaties and discrimination toward non-federally recognized Indian Nations are detailed. Statistics are included for unemployment, violence against women and sexual abuse in residential schools. The destruction of sacred places, environmental racism and border injustices are revealed. Further, the high rate of incarceration and disproportionate long prison sentences for American Indians are exposed in the 87-page report.

The exportation of banned pesticides by corporations in the United
States to Sonora, Mexico, where Yaqui are suffering from death and
toxic illnesses, and other Indigenous Peoples' territories, is also
documented.

Alberto Saldamando, IITC board president, and board member Lenny
Foster, Navajo, who reported on the freedom of religion for Indigenous
prisoners in the US, will present the report to the UN Committee in
Geneva in February. Western Shoshone and other organizations and
Nations will join Saldamando and Foster.

“As described in this Shadow Report, the colonialist policies of racial
subjugation have not ended for the Indigenous Peoples in the United
States (US). Under US constitutional doctrine first established in the
early 1800’s, Indigenous Peoples can be unilaterally deprived of their
lands and resources without due process of law and without
compensation; Indigenous governments can be terminated or stripped of
their rightful authority at the whim of the federal government and
their lands ‘allocated’ as ‘surplus lands.’ Treaties made between
Indigenous Peoples and the Colonialist governments and the Successor
State may be arbitrarily abrogated. Religious freedoms and religious
practice, Sacred Lands and the cultural integrity of Indigenous Peoples
go virtually unprotected,” the report states.

The data includes the overwhelming disparities in income, life
expectancy, poverty and unemployment. The disproportionate number of
Indians in prisons is revealed with statistics from Montana.

“Native Americans are not counted separately from whites in the
Department of Justice statistics but statistics from states with higher
percentages of Native populations show that they are also
overrepresented in the jail and prison population. For example, in
Montana, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, Native Americans, the
state's largest non-white group, comprise just 6.2 percent of Montana's
population but 20 percent of those in correctional institutions.
Nineteen percent of the 3,704 Montana men and boys being held in
correctional institutions are Native American. Nearly one-third of the
429 women in correctional institutions are Native American.”

While sacred places are destroyed by energy development at an alarming
rate, the report reveals the special relationship of the Lakota Nation
and Bear Butte (Mato Paha), Black Hills, in South Dakota.

Miguel Alfonso Martinez, the special rapporteur on treaties, agreements
and other constructive arrangements between states and Indigenous
Peoples’ populations, is quoted.

“Probably the most blatant case in point is the United States federal
Government’s taking of the Black Hills (in the present day state of
South Dakota) from the Sioux Nation during the final quarter of the
nineteenth century. The lands which included the Black Hills had been
reserved for the indigenous nation under provisions of the 1868 Fort
Laramie Treaty. It is worth noting that in the course of the litigation
prompted by this action, the Indian Claims Commission declared that ‘A
more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealing will never, in all
probability, be found in our history,’ and that both the Court of
Claims, in 1979, and the Supreme Court of that country 61 decided that
the United States Government had unconstitutionally taken the Black
Hills in violation of the United States Constitution. However, United
States legislation empowers Congress, as the trustee over Indian lands,
to dispose of the said property including its transfer to the United
States Government. Since the return of lands improperly taken by the
federal Government is not within the province of the courts but falls
only within the authority of the Congress, the Supreme Court limited
itself to establishing a $17.5 million award (plus interest) for the
Sioux. The indigenous party, interested not in money but in the
recovery of lands possessing a very special spiritual value for the
Sioux, has refused to accept the monies, which remain undistributed in
the United States Treasury," according to the information available to
the Special Rapporteur.

Further, the Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance, Mr.
Abdelfattah Amor drew special attention to the forced relocation of
Navajos on Black Mesa and the United States refusal to take into
consideration the spiritual practices of Navajos.

“On the subject of Black Mesa, the Special Rapporteur also calls for
the observance of international law on freedom of religion and its
manifestations. In the case of the Navajo elders, the reconciliation of
their human rights and other legitimate concerns were not taken into
account. No consideration was given their spiritual practices and
beliefs by the United States government in ordering their relocation.”

As lands are seized or leased for energy developments, human rights
violations increase. On the Navajo Nation, coal mining and uranium
mining have been detrimental.

“Economic interests, such as the coal mine, have often prevailed over
Indigenous human rights. These are principally private ventures that do
not have a true public interest, and their activities rarely consider
the fundamental rights or freedom of others. International law had not
been observed with regard to the Navajo Elders," Amor stated.

There are over 1,000 abandoned uranium mines and mills on the Navajo
Nation that have not been reclaimed. It has been over 50 years since
the federal government or the corporations reaped millions of dollars
in the mining and milling processes. These contaminants pose a
continuing health hazard to traditional Navajos who live in close
proximity to these sites.

“The Navajo Nation, which spans the New Mexico-Arizona border, was
polluted in 1979 when an accident at the United Nuclear Corporation’s
Church Rock Mill near Gallup, New Mexico released 94 million gallons of
radioactive waste into the Puerco River. The river flows through
reservation communities impacting a population of 10,000 Navajos who
live along the river using shallow wells and springs which flow from
the Puerco to draw water for livestock and personal needs. Despite the
fact that the spill is considered the second worst nuclear accident in
U.S. history after the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant meltdown
in Pennsylvania and the designation as superfund site by the EPA the
area remains un-reclaimed almost 30 years after the spill.”

Nearby the Navajo Nation, Acoma and Laguna Pueblos were also victims of radiation from uranium mining.

The Jackpile Mine on the Laguna Pueblo Reservation in New Mexico grew
to be the largest open pit uranium mine in North America from
1952-1982. The mine site is 2,000 feet from the Laguna village of
Paguate which has a population of 2,500 people.

Water quantity and quality were directly impacted by the mining of
uranium in the Grants Mineral Belt in New Mexico. Surface water sources
like the Puerco River became contaminated due to the close proximity of
mines and mills which spread contaminants through run-off and wind.
These contamination issues have impacted domestic water consumption and
use as well as agriculture and livestock watering and have drawn
correlations to cancerous related illnesses among the impacted
population.

Western Shoshone have been leaders in the fight against racism, nuclear
dumping and the abrogation of treaties. As Western Shoshone continued
their fight against the planned Yucca Mountain waste dump in Nevada,
Goshute fought a battle in Utah.

“Currently the Goshute Tribe in Utah is being considered for a low
level nuclear Monitored Retrievable Storage Site despite vehement
opposition by a majority of tribal members and the state of Utah.
Disposal of spent fuel and high level radioactive waste being proposed
by the U.S government at Yucca Mountain, Nevada has been an on-going
proposal for over 25 years. Yucca Mountain is a sacred site to the
Western Shoshone. Transportation of nuclear waste to repository sites
poses a problem for the entire country,” the report states.

While the past tragedies are exposed, the Bush administration has
pressed for more development on Indian lands already suffering from
atrocities.

“As the Bush administration has advocated the use of nuclear power as
an answer to global warming and climate change indigenous peoples must
strongly consider the historical past that have left the legacy of
health impacts from human exposure, land, air and water contamination,
contamination to traditional food sources, sacred sites, tradition and
culture from past uranium exploration and production.”

Indigenous Peoples at the borders are now the victims of Homeland Security as Americans respond with paranoia and xenophobia.

“Under the guise of Homeland Security, and under the rubric of
‘homeland security,’ the United States has increasingly become paranoid
and isolationist, and is ahead of schedule in building a barrier, a
steel wall along 700 miles of the US Mexican border. This wall and US
xenophobia greatly affect Indigenous Peoples whose lands straddle both
sides of the border,” the report statesm

The end result of US policies is many deaths of undocumented
immigrants, many of whom are Indigenous, including Mayans from Chiapas,
Oaxaca and Guatemala.

O’odham in Mexico Lt. Gov. Jose Garcia described the impact of the
border on his people in Sonora, Mexico. “Our people live on both sides
of the border, and we maintain relations with each other on a regular
basis, crossing the border to attend baptisms, weddings, funerals and
our traditional ceremonies, maintaining our Spiritual practice in spite
of the obvious difficulties the border poses for us.

“We understand that the United States is to build a steel wall on the
border and we are concerned as to how it will affect us, that it will
further divide our people. It will certainly be an obstacle not only to
immigrants but to the Indigenous Peoples of both the United States and
Mexico.

“It will block our customs and traditions and is not any solution to
the problem. The problem is one of poverty and the lack of economic
opportunity in Mexico. The migration of people, crossing into the
United States, will continue as people search of a better way of life.

Since July, Lipan Apache elders of El Calaboz, Texas have been the
targets of threats and harassments by Border Patrol, Army Corps of
Engineers and other US officials related to the proposed building of a
fence on their levee. The National Security Administration has demanded
that elders give up their lands. They have been told that they will
have to travel 3 miles to go through checkpoints, to walk, recreate, to
farm and herd goats and cattle on their own Apache lands.

Eloise Tamez, Lipan Apache in El Calaboz, describes the harassment and threat of the seizure of her lands by eminent domain.

“In mid July 2007, I was informed by telephone that Homeland Security
plans to split my property with a wall/fence. The informant (Border
Patrol Agent Rick Cavazos) indicated that the government, under a
National Security Directive, plans to build a fence on my private
property with or without my consent or approval. For the record, land
grant title holders currently own properties which extend to north of
the levee but also south of the levee of the Rio Grande. Of this, the
only ‘choice’ given me is that I can access my land south of the levee
via a proposed checkpoint that will be built three miles east of my
property (Garza Road). Many elders in our community will be denied
basic freedoms to access their private property, due to the burden this
‘access’ will impose on their daily lives. The government denies the
economic, social and cultural divides which are entrenched in the
agrarian, land-based cultures indigenous to South Texas. Significant
sectors of our communities will not be economically or socially
positioned to travel three miles and through a security check-point to
access their land grant private property holdings. Effectively, this
measure would seriously sever an indigenous community from cultural
resources, and cause immeasurable injury to community economic, social,
ecological proprietorship and future development.”

Meanwhile, representatives of 19 Indigenous Nations of the Americas met
in Tucson, Arizona, on November 17, 2007, to examine the situation of
the Border and Indigenous Peoples. They issued a report, wherein they
expressed their “… collective outrage for the extreme levels of
suffering and inhumanity, including many deaths and massive disruption
of way of life, that have been presented to this Summit as well as what
we have witnessed in our visit to the border areas during the Summit as
a result of brutal and racist US policies being enforced on the Tohono
O’odham traditional homelands and elsewhere along the US/Mexico border.”

In the report, the segments include: “Dishonored Treaty, Seeking
Recognition: The Winnemmem Wintu of Northern California, McCloud
River;” “Indigenous but with No Recognized Rights: the Native Peoples
of Hawai’i, Mauna Kea;” and “No recognition and no rights at all: The
Taino, Native Peoples of Puerto Rico, The Sacred Caguana Ceremonial
Center in Utuado, Borikén.”

The recommendations to CERD are:

Racist Constitutional Doctrines:

· Although there have
been no dialogues or conversations with Indigenous Peoples with regard
to the abolition of the racially discriminatory constitutional
doctrines described in this Shadow report, including the so-called
Trust Relationship, there is a well founded fear among many that simply
abolishing the present relationship between recognized tribes and the
United States would lead to individual States exerting jurisdiction
over Indigenous Peoples, the loss of land and its collective nature,
and many rights valued by recognized tribes as well as unrecognized
Indigenous Peoples. Consultations should take place with Indigenous
Peoples, including the right to free, prior and informed consent, with
the view of abolishing these racist doctrines while protecting the
rights of Indigenous Peoples as reflected by international customary
law and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples.

· That the United States recognize all Indigenous Peoples in the United
States as Indigenous Peoples with Indigenous rights, consistent with
the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and
with international customary law, including terminated Tribes,
unrecognized Tribes, Alaskan Natives, Native Hawai’ians and the Taino
Peoples of Puerto Rico. It should also comply with its Charter
responsibilities of ensuring the well being of the Native Peoples of
Guam and Puerto Rico.

· The “Plenary Powers Doctrine” should be immediately abolished.
Consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples, General recommendation XXIII, and customary
international law, Indigenous lands taken under this doctrine should be
restored.

· The United States should begin a process of reinstating abrogated and
unrecognized Treaties with Indigenous Peoples, with the view of
respecting and adhering to their terms, and provide, with the free
prior and informed consent of the Indigenous Peoples affected,
restitution and where appropriate, compensation for damages as a result
of their abrogation or failure of recognition.

1. Sacred Lands and Religious Freedom:

· Consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples, General recommendation XXIII, and customary
international law, Sacred Lands should be returned to Indigenous
Peoples with particular attention paid to the Black Hills of South
Dakota to the Lakota Nation.

· Indigenous Peoples should be allowed to practice their religion
without the necessity of permits or the observation and encumbrances of
tourists, bikers and rock climbers;

· Development that affects the Sanctity of Sacred Lands should
immediately cease and should only be allowed with the free, prior and
informed consent of the Indigenous Peoples affected; and,

· Prison Inmates, in both Federal and State prisons should immediately
be allowed their religious practice as is allowed all other religions
in United States prisons, including but not limited to, last rites for
condemned Indigenous inmates.

2. Environmental Racism

· Development with potential harm to Indigenous Peoples’ rights,
whether on recognized reservations or not, should not be done without
their free, prior and informed consent. The United States should take
immediate steps to remediate and compensate for the legacies of
development harmful to Indigenous Peoples.

· The United States should be held accountable for its behavior and
that of US trans-national corporations that violate the rights of
Indigenous Peoples abroad. It should immediately cease these racist
policies and practices and take appropriate legislative and
administrative measures to prevent these adverse activities and to
explore ways of holding transnational companies registered in the
United States accountable. Particularly, the United States should:

— Outlaw the manufacture of banned pesticides for export.

— Stop the spraying of herbicides in Colombia and other countries

— Cease their economic and logistical support of paramilitary death squads under the guise of “economic development.”

3. US Apartheid and Coerced Assimilation

· The United States must cease its de facto system of apartheid on
Indian Reservations as places to warehouse its Native American poor,
leaving them only option for “an economic existence worthy of human
dignity” the abandonment of community, language and culture.

· The United States must comply with its Treaty Obligations as well as
customary international law, and provide the means by which Indian
Reservations can develop and provide for future generations in keeping
with their cultures and traditions.

· Congress should act to reauthorize and update the Indian Health Care
Improvement Act to reflect both current needs of Indian health and the
current health care systems enjoyed by most Americans. Equally
importantly, it should receive the necessary funding to be effective.

· In order to better protect tribal female citizens from sexual
violence, the United States should recognize full tribal criminal
jurisdictional authority over all crimes occurring within Indian
country. In addition, Congress should provide adequate funding to fully
implement Title IX of the Violence against Women Act.

· The United States should afford Native Americans the full right to
participate in government by addressing the rampant voting
discrimination practices throughout the nation, and particularly in
South Dakota.

4. Articles 6 and 7 of the CERD Convention

· The United States should provide just and adequate reparation and
compensation for any damages suffered by indigenous victims of abuse by
the United States under its historical practice of mandating that
Native children attend federally sponsored boarding schools.

· The United States should promote the development of textbooks and the
teaching of culturally appropriate and historically accurate curriculum
for all school age children, particularly Native American children, of
the dignity and worth of Indigenous Peoples and cultures, as well as
their human rights.

PHOTO: Sebastian Quinac, Mayan, speaks of searching for bodies of
fellow Mayans on Tohono O'odham land in Arizona, including women
walking with their children, who died of dehydration and heat exposure.
Bill Means, cofounder of the International Indian Treaty Council,
(seated) was master of ceremonies at the Indigenous Peoples' Border
Summit of the Americas in November in San Xavier District on the Tohono
O'odham Nation. Photo Brenda Norrell.

Member of the Eastern Woodland Native American Confederacy
This information is vital to any thinking being most Forget or were never taught where the basses of the Constitution came from !The Native Peoples! And to think they don't or are unwilling to follow these foundations is True Testimony to the extent of there Stupidity ! I am a Mixed Breed and if I could cut off the parts that belong to the Euro-sentricks I would be disabled so I must come to terms with all it took for me to be me .Not all that easy to do some times! I and many others in the Eastern Woodlands Stand With You All- only as one can we win over these Indignities --My The Creator Give Us All The Power -Wisdom - Knowledge to Overcome